


and time would heal all hearts

by brahe



Series: brahe's 2017 advent bingo [9]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family, First Christmas Together, Fluff, Ghosts, Life day, Remembrance, ac2017, adventchallenge, cassian is space spanish, god i missed writing these guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 21:45:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12969036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brahe/pseuds/brahe
Summary: Cassian and Jyn and their first holiday together, and the things they remember.





	and time would heal all hearts

**Author's Note:**

> so it's been like a year or something ridiculous since I wrote for rogue one?? it felt so good to play with these guys again, honestly. everything I write for them ends up with a healthy dose of angst and this is no different, though I suppose it's more bittersweet than anything. I wanted this to be way more fluffly, lowkey like some hallmark first christmas kinda movie, but alas.  
> today's prompt is "ghosts" and I took that into a less "ghost of Christmas past" direction and into a more "ghosts of everyone we've lost" sich  
> title from grown up christmas list

Cassian is released from the medbay two days before Life Day, and if Jyn were more inclined to such things, she would perhaps have noticed the symbolism. Instead, she walks with Cassian back to the room that she's been sleeping in for the last two and a half weeks, _his_  room, keeps their pace slow and doesn't comment on the way his knees are shaking and his hands grip onto her like a vice.

The decorations in the hallways are minimal - strands of garland in some places, colored paper in others, and in this corridor, string lights. They light Cassian's face in red and blues and greens, and it would've been something romantic, maybe, if it weren't for the way his eyebrows are knitted together in concentration, the bags under his eyes big and dark. The others that pass them pay them no mind, perhaps used to the sight of a soldier helping another return to the barracks. But that's not quiet what this is, Jyn knows, because they aren't soldiers, they're ghosts of the rebellion, survivors where there should be none, and the other fighters have a tendency not to see her. 

 

Cassian lands on the bed, face to the ceiling, and simply breathes for a while. Jyn watches him carefully, notices the way his favors his left side and the way he winces when he shifts. He looks at her after a small eternity, and there's a smile in his eyes.

"There's a box of decorations in the closet," he tells her, and she continues to look at him, silent, only now in confusion. He gestures at himself. "I won't be getting up to get it." 

She snaps to action, then, pushes herself up and heads for the closet. It's a small thing, tucked into the wall with room enough for a few weeks clothing and a couple boxes. Not that either of them have that kind of thing. Jyn's few possessions have been residing in the closet for some days now, but she hadn't really looked at what was already in it.

"Top shelf," Cassian tells her from the bed. Jyn looks up, then turns around the drag her chair over. That makes Cassian laugh, and she glares fondly at him, hides the shadow that crosses her face when he winces and holds his ribs.

Jyn climbs onto the chair and surveys the top shelf. It's dusty and mostly empty, only three or four boxes tucked away.

"It's the one that says _life day_ ," he says. "Should still be visible," he adds, mostly to himself. Jyn squints a little, notices the faded script on the fronts of the boxes.

"Hey, Cassian?" she says, and she images she can hear the eyebrow he raises in return.

"What's wrong?"

Jyn traces the shapes of the letters on the closest box. "What language is this?" she asks, and he makes a soft sound.

"Oh, I forgot," he says, and she leans her head out of the closet to hear him better. "It's my native language. That's my mother's handwriting."

His tone is soft, like he's talking to himself and not to her, like he's talking to a memory, a ghost that lives in his thoughts. There's immediately half a dozen questions she wants to ask him, but she can't bring herself to interrupt this strange place he's gone to. She cherishes those distant, long gone thoughts of family too.

"Look for one that says _día de la vida_ ," he says, speaking louder again, and Jyn returns her attention to th boxes. The first two she checks say things she doesn't know, but they aren't the right ones. She pulls the one from the back corner, brushes the dust off the front, and reads the label.

"Got it," she tells him, and carefully holds onto the box as she climbs off the chair and pushes it back to her spot beside the bed.

 

Cassian's sitting up now, back resting against the pillows he's stacked against the wall behind him. He offers Jyn a smile, a little pained and a little haunted, and she gives him one in return as she sets the box on the sliver of empty bed between Cassian and the edge. She watches as he lightly traces the edges of the lid, looks at the label on the front to see the shapes of the letters, to remember what they mean beyond simple language.

He pushes the lid off, then, and inside are more decorations Jyn would have thought to see. She hadn't even expected him to have a box of anything from his childhood, let alone familial holiday things. There's several strands of string lights coiled beside a small pile of ornaments that were most definitely handmade by someone young. Cassian picks up one of the several figurines in the box, the paint worn in the place where Cassian has begun to run his thumb over it. Jyn notices a book leaning against the side and picks it up, opens the cover to find a few dried and pressed poinsettia flowers. She runs her fingers lightly against the petals - she's never seen one outside of holos, and it's been such a long time since she's seen any kind of flower. The next few pages are full of the same script and language from the label, and she skips ahead to halfway through and finds pages and pages of recipes. She can't read the ingredients or the instructions, but there's little pictures in the corners of some pages, and she imagines it's some kind of holiday cookbook.

"My sisters loved to bake," Cassian says, and Jyn looks up to see his eyes on her. "So my mother wrote each of them a book of recipes one Christmas, and when they all opened their books, I was so jealous to not have one that mama made me one for _día de los Santos Inocentes_."

He reaches for the book and Jyn passes it to him, watches the way he trails his fingertips along the pages.

"It's been such a long time since I opened this box," he says, and Jyn isn't sure if he's talking to himself or to her. "I had forgotten I had some of this."

"My mother was a terrible cook," Jyn tells Cassian, and he looks up at her, surprised and amused. She shakes her head. "It was always papa who cooked. He'd watch us from the the kitchen as we decorated our tree or whatever we had, and then after we ate dinner he'd dance with me, singing songs I only half remember as we spun around the house."

"We used to have dances," Cassian says. "We'd light bonfires all over the square and there'd be music from a band and tables of cookies and food and we'd dance until the sun came up. It was always cold, and sometimes it would even snow, but everyone would stay out dancing for hours."

They lapse into silence, then, and Jyn's memories of looking up at her father's face slowly fade into an imagining of Cassian and his village outside all night, no doubt filling the sky with light and laughter. There were never many people around when Jyn was younger, when they were with the Empire or after, but she thinks it would be a wonderful sight to see.

The kyber against her neck seems to grow heavier, and she wraps a hand around it almost subconsciously.

"How do you like cookies?" Cassian asks her sometime later, and she looks to him and sees the cookbook open in his lap to a page that looks a little more well worn than the others, a few mysterious stains against the paper.

Jyn smiles at him. "I haven't had proper cookies in a long time."

Cassian's answering smile is tinged with sadness and something that would be sympathy to someone else, but she sees it for what it is. It's a look she sees in the mirror when the ghosts of her parents haunt her too strongly, when she can't stop the jagged memories of better days that flood her senses and they tear into her resolve.

"And when you're feeling up to it," she adds, curling a hand around Cassian's leg, "we'll dance, too."

**Author's Note:**

> ps all my knowledge of spanish and hispanic culture comes from my spanish roommate so no offense intended and all that


End file.
